Manly likes the view, but he would no doubt like it better if the scenery below included two or three commercial hog farms.

When Smithfield Foods Inc. and Smithfield-Carroll's Farms Inc. announced plans only three years ago to locate about 50 1,000-sow hog farms in a five-county area, the sparsely populated expanse of loblolly pines and flat fields that fan out around the feed mill seemed the perfect place to raise hundreds of thousands of hogs.

But in the past two years four counties have taken steps to restrict large livestock operations forcing officials from Smithfield-Carroll's Farms Inc. to expand their ongoing search for rural hog farm sites into North Carolina.

"The rules continue to change," said Manly. "We're in sort of a limbo right now."

Last week, for the first time, livestock managers at Smithfield-Carroll's Farms Inc. started feeding home-cooked meals to their 20,000 hogs. At rates of up to 40 tons per hour, batches of small grains, vitamins and minerals are mixed and cooked at 160 degrees inside a recently completed $4.5 million feed mill.

Smithfield-Carroll's officials are excited about no longer having to truck in 21,700 tons of feed each week at a cost of about $12 per ton. The new mill is in Sussex County, about two miles west of Waverly on Route 460 at a point that Smithfield-Carroll's had hoped would soon be the center of their 50-farm hog empire.

Although designed to turn out enough feed for 50 hog farms, the new mill can easily be expanded to handle as many as 100. Smithfield-Carroll's is currently marketing about 5,600 hogs each week from 14 farms. Six more farms are near completion.

With continuing opposition to the farms, including a petition now pending before the State Water Control Board demanding that several of the farms be closed down for environmental reasons, it is becoming increasingly unclear where the next 30 farms will be located.

Manly, Smithfield-Carroll's spokesman, is vague on where the company plans to go from here. But he concedes that at least four counties in northern North Carolina fall within the 50-mile radius of the feed mill, the area established by the company as an outer limit for the farms. Joseph W. Luter III, Smithfield Foods president and chief executive officer, said late last year that the hog-raising partnership would expand if necessary into North Carolina, where, he claims, "there is a much more favorable business environment."

"It makes a lot of sense for us to look in North Carolina," said Manly.

Manly insists that the hog operation has not given up on the idea of locating more farms within the five-county area where in the last 24 months citizens have been extremely successful in pressuring elected officials to enact zoning amendments that make it almost impossible for Smithfield-Carroll's to find large tracts that meet the stiffer requirements.

Surry County established an entirely new zoning district for intensive livestock operations and now requires extensive soil and water tests on proposed farm sites as well as 2,500-foot buffer zones around hog farms. In Dinwiddie County, the Planning Commission refused to grant approval for a proposed farm, saying it was too close to residential areas. The Sussex County Board of Supervisors was so concerned about the sudden influx of hog farms that a zoning ordinance was adopted this year for the first time in the county's history.

Two years ago, Southampton County established a moratorium on the hog farms and is now completing work on a revised zoning ordinance expected to place rigid environmental controls on large scale livestock operations.

Smithfield-Carroll's compounded its expansion problems and gained the wrath of the water board this year when the company's poorly managed plans to control overflowing waste storage lagoons and related problems resulted in six Notices of Violation and a $7,000 fine.

As part of a water board conscent order, Smithfield-Carroll's agreed to implement a number of environmental safeguards at the hog farms. Those improvements, when completed, are expected to cost the firm more than $1 million just on existing farms and have indefinitely postponed further expansion efforts, Manly said.

"We've got a lot of work to do in terms of compliance with the consent order and we're trying to focus our efforts on that right now," said Manly. "But our intention is to continue to look for farms in all of these areas."